2018 media preview

WATCH ART IN YOUR UNDERPANTS! QueerTech.io = ART(URL, IRL)

Take the leap into the queer digital realm from the comfort of your home with this extraordinary project that gathers digital artworks by queer identifying artists from across the globe, presented by QueerTech.io and Midsumma Festival. The project can be explored online via the QueerTech.io webportal from 12 January, or you can view the work at TESTING GROUNDS (16-23 Jan) and RMIT:ART:INTERSECT (31 Jan-22 Mar).

ACMIART + FILM will host a free screening of selected QueerTech.io work at 6.30pm Friday 2nd February 2018 that will feature a panel discussion with some of the QueerTech.io curators and artists.

Themes emerging from the 2018 QueerTech.io open call include digitally-born queer utopias, queer reimaginings of computer game platforms, and interactive works that extend the digital as a queer prosthesis. The project will feature over twenty artists engaged in making neural networks, augmented reality, computer games, interactive websites and video art.

Highlights include

SetOutputWorld (a world of the wrong size) is a navigable virtual terrain that plays with ideas of speculative archeology, material alchemy, and encapsulation. The project grapples with the simultaneous influx of
optimism and pessimism that comes with imagining a future from our present. At the core of the work is a fascination with the double-edged sword of preservation and the history of plastic as a once utopian and now dystopian material. Based in Chicago, Kayla Anderson, is a thing-among-things and acts as an intermediary between objects and ideas.

Something in the Water, an online game set in a future world in which a mass leakages of atrazine, a herbicide known to feminize male frogs, has queered the landscape. Players play as and encounter post-human and post-gendered creatures which draw upon queer cryptozoology. As the game progresses, more chemicals are introduced and the environment begins its descent into queer utopia. Something in the Water was made by Karl Munstedt, a digital artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Karl grew up spending much of his time on the internet befriending strangers and finding numerous cyber boyfriends. Using technologies like gaming, augmented reality, the web, and mobile applications, Karl’s work explores issues of queerness, visibility, and fantasy.

Metaverse Nails™ (patent pending) are the next level nail art. View your Metaverse Nails with the Metaverse Nails APP to create 3D holograms that Pop & Sparkle off your nails! Each Metaverse Nails design is a limited-edition Artist commission – made exclusively for Metaverse Makeovers. Every nail has been individually crafted using Augmented Reality technology to enable an array of interactive holograms to fly out of your fingers. Metaverse Nails are brought to you by Australian based Metaverse Makeovers, taking #nextlevelnails #BLINGBLING to the WORLD!

QueerTech.io is an artist-run passion project by Xanthe Dobbie, Travis Cox and Alison Bennett. Members of the collective will be undertaking a residency at Testing Grounds 16-28 January where they will continue to explore the potential of #queertech artistic practices. Drop in, get involved and collaborate!